Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Capers in the basement

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

Jane and Fi discuss the contents of Jane's basement and try to work out why Rear Admirals are called Rear Admirals. Answers on a postcard please. They're also joined by Ferdinand Mount to talk about his new book Big Caesars and Little Caesars.Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfiIf you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail].  Assistant Producers: Eve SalusburyTimes Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Okay, so we are in a very, very, very cold studio and we did a piece today, didn't we, about air conditioning and I'm not sure we're helping, are we? No. By being this cold. It's really freezing cold. Shall we get the complaint out of the way first? Oh, yes. Well, let's do it. Because, where is it, where is it?

It started, it had one of those brilliant beginnings. Shame on you, Jane Garvey. Shame on you, Jane Garvey. Shame on you. Here it goes. Fiona from Hose. Shame on you, Jane Garvey, turning your nose up at Deliveroo at 8am. That poor person may have just come off a long shift at an NHS hospital or factory or been cleaning offices all night and hadn't had the time to shop.

It could even have been a bag of shopping. Lots of love, Fiona from Hove. As she said, a Mac breakfast is gorgeous. I only pass judgement when I see it's definitely a McDonald's. And yes, of course you're right that they could have been doing a long shift and just got back from doing a job that we desperately need people to do well. So I take it back. But in my defense, I did say yesterday that's the side of myself I don't like, but I can't help passing judgment. And there's another one on that very subject from Beth. on that very subject from Beth.

I felt I had to send a quick defence of the morning deliveroo, lest there be folk on my street who see the once or twice a month, mostly, morning food delivery to my door and assume I am, as my dad termed it when we were teenagers, lazing around in my bed. I'm 30. 14 years ago, though, I had a rather nasty cancer, even by cancer standards, but I survived.

Unfortunately, the treatment left me with fatigue and my own personal superpower, getting infections, necessitating a fair few operations down the years, last count 15, the consequence of which is that I'm alive and I'm not knocking that for a second, but I do have severe chronic pain in addition to that fatigue. So for the last six years, I haven't been able to study or work, but with the help of family, I am living independently, able to have a life of my own to some extent, but it's not easy. And my insistence on radical acts like leaving my flat to take part in life or say doing the occasional basic chore means there can be quite a lot of crashing.

So I do get morning delivery orders, nothing to do with laziness or alcohol the night before. I appreciate Jane owning that she knew her judgment was unfair, but for the benefit of other listeners who may not understand the unseen aspects of these things, I thought it was worth emailing. Beth, it's always worth emailing and you're absolutely right. And I'm sorry you've had such a tough time. And honestly, I hope you just find a way of dealing with it all because it sounds like you've got a lot on your plate there and well done for establishing an independent life. It sounds like you've done brilliantly. Absolutely. Now, this one comes from Kate, who had started off what's turned out to be just a really interesting conversation

about people who've done things after the age of 45 and we did ask Kate to get back in touch and she has. Many thanks for reading my email about the potential for making it over 45. You asked me to let you know what I'd like to do by this age. Well a week after my 40th birthday my lovely husband and I were given an infertility diagnosis and this triggered me to want to do something to make more of a contribution to society. This will be very boring to most but I'd like to join the graduate scheme of the Houses of Parliament to support the work that goes on there. The training scheme is very competitive, it can take several attempts to get on and most of

my competitors will be in their 20s. The thought of only having five years to make this work and be unlikely to progress after the age of 45 makes me a bit sad. I don't like hollow affirmations of positivity but I hope that I'll be seen to still have potential beyond my mid-40s. Well we very much hope so too actually Kate and Jane wasn't saying that you know people can't make it after the age of 45 we were just genuinely interested to hear more stories of people who have can I say that I think that's just such a wonderful thing to do after being given what I assume is some really sad news in your life so to immediately then be able to turn it into you know pushing your life into a different direction,

I think we will allow ourselves a moment of positivity there, Kate. It does sound... By the way, I think it's a really interesting thing to do. Yeah, it sounds fantastic. And keep us posted. And especially as you go through the process, if there is any whiff of people not being as interested in you because you are in your 40s as opposed to in your 20s because I would have thought I mean there just are so many jobs

where a bit of wisdom and experience and just having you know seen the vicissitudes and vagaries of life has to be to your advantage and I would have thought in the Houses of Parliament that would be so. So I hope that that's true. You associate the Houses of Parliament with wisdom? No I just would, I would hope Jane. Well we would hope, we would hope. I would hope it's a place where age is valued. I really do hope that, Jane. Just this time last week, we were in that porter cabin at Latitude.

Gosh, it seems like a lifetime ago. I think I picked up a virus when I was there. Do you think you did? Because you have been a little under the weather. I've just been a bit peaky all week and I think it was festivals. What can I say? Well, yeah.

But you were full of praise for the toilet facilities there. I think next time you've just got to insist on bringing your own. I'll have it towed down. Caroline is a bit vexed because she's four weeks behind in listening to the podcast. Caroline, put more effort in. Just, you know, for heaven's sake, you don't need to work or look after your house. Or you can just

listen to us and then you can catch up um she wants to write about rob rinder now i don't remember us talking about rob rinder but it was the week you're away oh was it okay right there you go that'll explain it anyway she writes in praise of him he was the guest speaker at the end of the year 11 pupil and parent t at my children's school some years ago and he was marvellous. The event took place when year 11 were finishing just prior to the kids actually doing their GCSEs and he got up and said something along the lines of these GCSEs absolutely do not matter what matters is doing something you love. Now as a pushy middle-class parent I didn't entirely approve of that message but it was wonderfully refreshing for the kids.

After two years of hearing how desperately important GCSEs were for the future and all the stress that entails, to hear something so completely different and very inspiring. We all still think of his speech very fondly. Caroline says forlornly, I do hope to eventually catch up. I do hope to eventually catch up. Well, just take a couple of weeks off all your other responsibilities and get to the up-to-date podcast, Caroline. Come on. So Rob Rinder is one of those people who, whatever he turns his attention to, he does seem to excel at.

So dare I say it might be easy for him to say, don't worry about exams and all of that, because he's just done incredibly well. You know, he's a barrister and turned that into being a TV sensation has turned that into being a selling novelist. But he was a really nice guy. He was extraordinary

actually. We asked him, it was when Louise Minchin was doing the programme. They know each other actually. We asked him one question and 25 minutes later we said, thank you very much Rob, we're into goodbye. It's my sort of interview that yeah it never fails to make me laugh so I apologize if this is just a repetition of an old anecdote but the only person that we had come to talk to us at our school and that's not me being rude about the school that kind of people passing through and giving

energizing career lectures just wasn't a thing in the 1980s. The only visitor we had, this was an all-girls school, we had a rear admiral from the Navy. Did you? We did. And as far as I know, nobody signed up to the Navy afterwards. But I suppose I'm chortling because if there's a rear admiral, is there a front admiral?

Oh, now you're being silly. But seriously, what does being a rear admiral, is there a front admiral? Oh, now you're being silly. But seriously, what does being a rear admiral mean? Isn't that, I'm chancing, I don't think, I'm going to guess. Yeah. Is it to do with when they were issuing commands, they would stand at the rear of the vessel? Could it be that?

Okay. Or the rear of the fleet? Then wouldn't they be called an aft admiral? Because it's forward and aft, isn't it? Okay. If you've been in the Navy, know someone who's been in the Navy or just live by the sea and you know the answer to that. Or you've been in village people. Maybe you were at a school where a front admiral came to talk to you.

I'm just moving on to Iris, who says lentils. I don't want, thank you, Iris, but I don't want lentils again. I can recommend El Navarrico Spanish Lentejas. They are a different quality to the normal dried ones. God knows what they served in our canteen yesterday, but I don't think they were from Ocado. Let's put it that way. You know, after the other week, we

tasted some queen chickpeas. Yes. Yeah. I've sent off for some, and they arrived the other day, but I now look like a mad prepper, because in my store cupboard, I've got these huge... But you are a mad prepper. I've got six huge jars of chickpeas. Because if you go down to Jane Garvey's

basement, there's a really spooky cardboard cutout of Julian Warwicker and Peter Allen and then just stacks and stacks and stacks of toilet roll and capers. I do appreciate your good English and diction, continues Iris. Your good English and diction? Yes, sorry. I'll take that one again. I do. It's not been my day, this.

I do appreciate your good English and diction. Could I just mention one thing, though? With two children, it is usual to refer to younger and elder, not youngest and eldest. Yeah, so I think that one was... That's right, Iris, I'm sorry. ...me as well. Oh, no, it's probably me too, so I'm sorry.

I often just wish I'd had more children, so I'm probably just trying to pretend that I do. I'd have liked seven. No, you wouldn't. I can honestly say I would not have liked seven kids. Carol Kirkwood was one of seven kids, wasn't she? Was she? Yeah, I think so, yeah.

Did she tell us that yesterday? It probably didn't come out in my incisive interview, but I think I read it on Wikipedia. Gosh, it's rare to be one of seven, isn't it? I would think so, yeah. I know so. Shall we talk about Ferdinand Mount? You talk about

Ferdinand Mount. So Ferdinand Mount was our guest today. Do you know what? I really hope that you get better. Well, you've been hoping that for a few years. It hasn't happened, has it? Ferdinand Mout came in. He was our guest today because he's written a book all about Caesars. And his theory is that the original Caesar created such an extraordinary template for leadership that over the centuries, men have just chosen to ape it. And his argument is that it doesn't matter how liberal a democracy is or how intelligent

the voters believe themselves to be, there is something in the strong man of Caesar that draws people in and it has the same kind of end, which isn't necessarily a good one. His book is really fascinating, actually. And one of the many things that we talked about in this interview is the fact that, you know, this strong man thing really is largely men, you know, women, through all of the advances of equality haven't actually had that kind of a figure to ape. So we do get on to talking about that in case you're thinking, oh my goodness, this is a man's soup, I can't cope. So I began by asking him if we have so many Caesars across history because there are simply so many of them living amongst us.

The world is full of Caesars and would-be Caesars, and it's a great surprise to us because we were taught that 30 years ago by Francis Fukuyama and others, that we are going to have a nice quiet time with lots of lovely liberal democracies and no trouble at all. And now wherever you look, the strong men either just getting into power or just being chucked out or waiting to get back in like Donald Trump. They're all over the place. So it's a great surprise. What does it say about our yearnings for a liberal democracy

that we allow it to be constantly contaminated with something that is completely opposite to those ideals? Well, it is very extraordinary. We like certainty, or some of us. We like the strong man who says, I've got all the answers. And what we get fed up with is parliaments and democracies which argue and debate and change their minds and come back and repeal the acts of the last government and and all that and we think well let's have something nice and simple and firm which will and which will show um the other countries what we're made of and it is a recurring temptation from ancient Rome onwards it's extraordinary when you put into context the similar themes of the strong man throughout history

because they are so, they're such blunt weapons, aren't they? They're basically, don't let any foreigners in. If you do, your demise will be the foreigner's fault and I can promise you a better tomorrow but I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to explain the detail to you. And that's basically it. That's basically it. It's very, very simple. Scratch your head and ask what President Xi or Putin or Erdogan

or any of these fellows want. It is very simple. Get the foreigners out and don't let anyone interfere with us. And I'll tell you the story and the the thing that you really find so remarkable throughout from Julius Caesar onwards is they make it up they tell untruths and then they tell more untruths Julius you know, we were all taught at school that his commentaries on the Gallic Wars when he defeated Gaul were models of simplicity, accuracy, and truth. And actually, a chap who was with him when he crossed the Rubicon said, no, no, not a bit of

it. Arsenius Pollio said, no, they were all made up with very little regard for fact and huge exaggeration. Sometimes you read on one page that a tribe was wiped out, and then five pages later, tribe is wiped out again. A lot of it is made up, but it fooled people for 2,000 years. Some of our modern Caesars don't have such a long lifespan, their lives. For example, Donald Trump, it's true that half the Republican Party, perhaps more, still believes that he won the 2020 election. But I don't think anyone else outside their ranks does. But the extraordinary thing about Trump is that he's been up to this game for years, because when Barack Obama was re-elected in 2012, Trump tweeted, we can't let this happen. We need a revolution in this country. And we must march on the White

House. We must stop this happening. Obama lost by a mile. Exactly the same lies that he was going to tell eight years later. But he suddenly, quite swiftly, saw that wasn't going to wash, so he deleted the tweets, but however, a record was kept. So they keep on lying. And when Boris Johnson is thrown out, finally, what brings about his final disgrace, it is that the Privileges Committee of the House of Commons said he repeatedly told a string of untruths about Partygate. And that, of course, we know he's got a record of mendacity as long as your arm.

But that was the final blow to him. And I think it's very interesting, that word privileges, because it sounds a sort of, you know, toffee-nose sort of word, unjustifiable privileges. But it has a deep resonance. And when Charles I, 400 years ago, tried to arrest the five members and he went down the Strand to try and catch them up, the crowds in London shouted, privileges of Parliament, which is quite a mouthful to shout. privileges of Parliament, which is quite a mouthful to shout. But they felt then, as we feel now, that if Parliament is to work, if it's to be an independent debating chamber, then it has to have these privileges, which it mustn't abuse, but it must have them. And so the same contest

goes on, recurs at intervals over the centuries. Can we talk about one of those assaults on Parliament? Because you start the book with Cromwell. One of the many things that I learned from your book was that Cromwell was pretty much diagnosed as a manic depressive, wasn't he? And actually that is quite a common theme in Little Caesars and Big Caesars, a really pretty obvious mental illness. Yes, it's very remarkable that something that happened so long ago,

a person who lived so long ago, that we have two medical reports on his mental condition when he was a young man. Both of them saying he was an extremely odd person and suffering these terrible swings from total depression to delusions of grandeur that he was going to save the country. So he was a very rum cove. But it's even rummer, if you think about it, that if you go to the House of Commons,

cross the road in Parliament Square, and there in front of you is the statue of Oliver Cromwell, looking warts and all, looking like a nightclub bouncer. And you think, what the hell's he doing there? Because the one thing that we all learnt at school is that Cromwell charged into Parliament, smashed it up, said, you're no Parliament, get out, took the base, chucked out the Speaker and broke the place up.

And that wasn't the only time he did it. He did it five more times. Whenever the voters returned a majority that he didn't like, he went down to Whitehall and smashed the place up. Yet there he is in the pride of place. And I think it's very significant. Why is that happening? Because in the 19th century, Thomas Carlyle, the great historian,

developed a passion for hero worship. He said what the nation needs is heroes, great men. This democracy, these ballots, these elections, that's all rubbish. What you need is a great man to tell you what to do. And Cromwell was the greatest man in English history. And people swallowed it. And he became, from a villain of our history, he became the hero.

But you could make that charge against a lot of historians, don't you think? That there is a collusion in creating this heroic status in order to fuel many people's careers, be that commercial or academic? I think so. people's careers, be that commercial or academic? I think so.

Historians, Cromwell is a very good example, historians have consistently inflated his reputation and sort of quietly pretended or minimised the massacres that he committed in Ireland and Scotland. Interestingly, when Lord Rosebery, who was very keen on hero worship, the Victorian Prime Minister, when he tried to get the House of Commons to vote the money for a statue, suddenly the Irish MPs said, well, we're having none of that. He murdered our ancestors at Droyda and Wexford.

And so he couldn't get it through. So in the end, he had to pay for the statue himself. Or rather, as he was a fairly penniless Scottish laird, he got his rich wife to pay for the statue. So that's the history of this extraordinary statue, a very fine statue as it happens. And you realise that there are always people trying to rewrite history, to invent new heroes, and we need to watch out for them. Yes, polish the same place is what's going on.

I'm very glad that you mentioned a wife, Ferdinand, because where are the women? Where are the women? What struck me by the end of the book was just this overwhelming masculinity, obviously, that is associated with the strong man. I know that's an obvious thing to say, but also this incredible, I mean,

it's almost a forgiveness of some pretty disastrous male traits throughout history. And within the feminist movement, it is often said that if you can't see it, you can't be it. But it struck me that one of the problems with the way that we've been governed and our political leaders is that because you can see something, lots of people think that they want to be it, but it's not a great thing to see. No, no, absolutely, I couldn't agree more. I have one woman in my selection.

I mean, there are others. There's so many possible people to choose that you could go on forever. But the only woman I did choose was Indira Gandhi, whose emergency was a fascinating exercise because nobody thought, when they put her in power, they thought, oh, she's just a silly girl, we'll be able to manipulate her, just because she was Nehru's daughter.

She turned out to be made of steel and extremely tough. And anyway, one day she just decided to abolish the Constitution, lock up 100,000 people, and introduce censorship across the subcontinent. And then everyone gave. Nobody, and all her admirers in England, like Michael Foote and Margaret Thatcher, who'd been at the same college at Oxford as Indira had,

all said, oh, well, she must have her reasons. So they all made excuses for her. But it was just as bad as any other seizure of power. The only thing, extraordinary thing, was that she then, after a year or 18 months, she thought, well, I better have an election. So she had an election, which she lost thumpingly. So that was the end of Indira for a bit. She got back again later. But the lesson of that, for a bit. She got back again later. But the lesson of that, I'm afraid, is that Indira Gandhi's opponents, the nationalists, thought, aha, the Indian people are quite ready for a touch of strong men or strong woman, womanship. And we can use that. And so Narendra Modi has learned a lot from the Indira

playbook. And it's remarkable that though they were on other opposite sides of the political divide, he doesn't criticize her, because he learned how to do it from her. Our guest on the podcast today and on the program is Ferdinand Mount. And we were discussing the presence of women in his book, which is called Big Caesar and Little Caesar, and perhaps a notable absence of a strong leader, sometimes fighting for survival, might be the one and only Margaret Thatcher.

No, I didn't. I mean, I worked for Margaret Thatcher, and she was very bossy, as we all know, and could be very bullying and people who she could also, she could be very charming and kind. She could also be very vindictive. But why she doesn't qualify is because she didn't break the rules. She abided, And the same is true that Winston Churchill, who's a terrific bully, but he didn't break the rules. They had a basic respect for the rules of parliamentary democracy. In the depths of World War I, Churchill said of the House of Commons, this little place is the heart of all our destinies. You might not like Thatcher.

You might not like Thatcher, you might not like Churchill, but what you couldn't say is that they broke up the system. They basically respected the constitutional settlements that they'd inherited. And so that, I think, is the big difference. Another thing people say, well, you say that the Caesars all tell lies, don't democratic politicians tell lies? Anthony Eden told a lie at Suez. Many people think Tony Blair told an untruth, at the least, about weapons of mass destruction. Where does the simple act of lying place somebody in terms of how we should respect them? Do we just accept that the nature of politics

is that sometimes you will lie? Very few politicians escape having lied at least once during their careers. But the difference, I think, is that if the system is working properly, the prime minister is held to account as Antony Eden was held to account for the lies at Suez, as Tony Blair was held to account by the Chilcot Inquiry. That is what parliamentary democracy is all about. And that's why it's so important that Prime Ministers should answer to parliament.

I thought it was a bad sign when Boris set up a smart lectern at a conference centre just next door to number 10 so that he could address the nation directly. Well, you may say all very democratic and so on, but the disadvantage of that is that nobody is answering back. Nobody is questioning him as, well, we're sitting in this studio now, and there you see Rishi Sunak being questioned by Keir Starmer at Prime Minister's Questions every week. That is telling an untruth to the House of Commons is the most serious offence that can be

because it undermines the whole basis of democratic trust and argument. So that is very much at the heart of it all. People who say, for example, of Partygate, oh, who cares if they had a couple of drinks at the end of the working day? That is not the point. The point is that you have to tell the truth to Parliament as best you can. And that's what he didn't do. to Parliament as best you can. And that's what he didn't do.

So if we look around the world now, and you did a very succinct list of the strongmen who are available to us at the moment. So you have Putin, you have Trump, you've had Bolsonaro, you've got Erdogan. You know, it is quite a substantial list. You say that your book isn't a pessimistic one, it's a hymn to vigilance. In a time when we as citizens have more access to information than at any other time in history, isn't there more vigilance being shown?

I think there is. And some of our recent Caesars have been thrown out. They've been thrown out by the voters in the case of Bolsonaro and Donald Trump. They've been thrown out by Parliament in the case of Boris Johnson. There is always a possibility of disposing of them. But that doesn't mean they leave a lot of damage behind. Yes. And that's the interesting thing, isn't it? I mean, it's just this template of the kind of politician

that we still believe will bring us all good things. It is just such a stamp throughout history. So do you think in 40, 50 years' time, this conversation won't make as much sense to our children and grandchildren because the template might have changed. I'm afraid that we might well be having exactly this conversation in 50 years time. I think the same threat will come again and we shall have to meet it again as we have in the past. Does that depress you slightly? Well, in a way it depresses me, but in a way it sort of invigorates. It means that the struggle continues, as they used to say in the Spanish Civil War,

after a particularly bad defeat. We aren't going to get rid of little Caesars, certainly, and we hope we don't have to cope with big Caes seizures. They will be always on the lookout for fresh opportunities, for periods of unrest where people feel lost or large parts of the population feel left behind or they feel oppressed by the supposed threat of large-scale immigration. These things will recur. So will the challenges. Ferdinand Mount and his book is out now.

And if you're interested in that kind of enormity of history, then I would highly recommend the book. It is a dense read, but there is so much in it. It's got pictures, Jane in it but it's got pictures jane oh it's got pictures it's got pictures that's good um it is it is depressing that that final thought of his that we might be having exactly the same chat 50 years from now yeah and no very much so and you know one of the things i found the most interesting about his thesis is just these really kind of ball planks of policy that Caesars have, which is don't let an immigrant population in. If there is an immigrant population,

blame things on them and strike out in an aggressive fashion across the world or to your neighbours, because that's how you will be able to determine your own success. And it keeps working. And it keeps working, yep. Well, more for us. Yes, no, definitely. It's on us. But actually his message is one of positivity, that actually, you know, we need to stay vigilant

and this might be our chance to kind of look around and learn. So it's not all doom and gloom at the end, but it is an interesting read. If you're listening to this on Thursday, Caroline won't be, because she'll be listening to this at some point towards the end of August, possibly September,

maybe even November, if she really doesn't get a wiggle on. We should say that Friday is when the new Book Club podcast will drop. And it is, as promised, a discussion about Valerie Perrault's Fresh Water for Flowers just about remembered it I was going to call it something else Fresh Water for Flowers that's it isn't it yeah it is and we had loads and loads of different thoughts about it which

we've hopefully managed to compile into a listenable form and thank you if you've taken part in the book club and what we're looking for next time around is another suggestion a slightly kind of out of nowhere suggestion we thought you know something that not everybody will have read or read lots of reviews of could be a writer that you have loved for ages and want other people to find out about um it could be somebody you've never tried before but have always wanted to what i mean if he's right we don't really want one that's going to be everywhere. We'd like to do something a bit different.

We'd like to feel a bit special, don't we? Just a very tiny bit, yes. And we have mooted the point that it might be nice to delve into a bit of crime fiction. If you have one to recommend, you know what to do. Yeah, but we don't want any dead bodies of beautiful young women. No, we'll try and avoid the grizzly, if at all possible. I'll tell you, the book I'm reading now is called The Sanctuary or The Sanctuary by Andrew Hunter Murray.

Have you heard of this? No. It's a sort of eco-thriller and I'm enjoying it. Yes, very good. That's by a man. But hey, you know. You were gay. Broad church and all that.

Anyway, I think this could be the weekend the aliens arrive and if they do I shan't be remotely surprised no so I might not see you on Monday but if I do then I don't know that was brilliant right have a good weekend oh don't forget the book club podcast

book club podcast tomorrow. Jane and Fee at Timestock Radio. I think we need to regroup over the weekend, don't we? Our apologies. We'll be better on Monday. Maybe. Bye. We're bringing the shutters down on another episode of the internationally acclaimed podcast Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler

and the podcast executive producer is Henry Tribe. But don't forget that you can get another two hours of us every Monday to Thursday afternoon here on Times Radio. We start at 3pm and you can listen for free on your smart speaker. Just shout Play Times Radio at it. You can also get us on DAB Radio in the car or on the Times Radio app whilst you're out and about being extremely busy.

And you can follow all our tosh behind the mic and elsewhere on our Instagram account. Just go onto Insta and search for Jane and Fee and give us a follow. So in other words, we're everywhere, aren't we, Jane? Pretty much everywhere. Thank you for joining us. And we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon.